Why Blue Circle is not like professional networking platform LinkedIn

Though a great product, LinkedIn has become too cluttered as a platform for senior leaders to network and connect, says Blue Circle founder Siddharth Anand

Siddharth Anand, founder of professional networking platform Blue Circle, believes that though LinkedIn is a great product, it has become too cluttered as a platform for senior leaders to network and connect.
 
Co-founded by Anand and Goutam Anand, Blue Circle started out in 2017 as an exclusive offline network for senior leaders across industries. They hosted over a hundred physical and virtual events and enabled several connections, and learnt. The need to launch a digital platform for senior leaders was based on the feedback he and his team received when they conducted offline events, shares Siddharth Anand.
 
“Over the years, while leaders benefitted from our engagements, by connecting with the right people and exchanging quality dialogue, they often told us that they wanted to have these discussions and connect with leaders on a more frequent basis. And they also said that platforms like LinkedIn or other professional networks were cluttered and lacked focus,” he adds.

 

Realising the need and opportunity, they launched Blue Circle’s mobile app this year. It has seen its membership soar to 8,000 leaders so far.
 
Blue Circle is a sector-specific professional networking platform for senior leaders. The app offers focused content, communities, and conversations across 20 industries, and brings together decision makers to exchange sector-specific opportunities.
 
The 20 Communities on the app are e-mobility, energy, health care, logistics, real estate, aerospace & defence, agriculture & food processing, auto components, BFSI, chemicals, education, hospitality & tourism, IT, infrastructure, metals & mining, media & advertising, retail & consumer goods, talent search & development, telecom and textile.

 
Memberships
 
Thanks to its focused approach, says Anand, Blue Circle saw pre-launch sign-ups by more than 3,000-5,000 senior leaders. It now has over 8,000 members and expects to touch the 10,000 number by the end of this financial year. Blue Circle boasts names like Naveen Munjal (MD, Hero Electric), Gautam Khanna (CEO, Hinduja Hospital), Rakesh Malhotra (Founder, Livquard/SAR Group), Ram Gopal (CEO, Barclays), and Arvind Mehra (ED & CEO, Mahindra Aerospace), among others.
 
According to Anand, Blue Circle is the first sector-focused professional network and memberships are strictly by invitation only. In its first version, the platform only focuses on an individual’s designation. The entry-level designation required on Blue Circle is DGM.

 
“This platform is built for leaders and it is gated, hence entry is only by invitation. We're not focusing on company size or revenue, and we have a good mix of leaders coming in. We also have policy makers, and education leaders who have joined Blue Circle,” adds Anand.
 
This firm has also managed to attract investors who believe that such a platform is needed for senior leaders. Raghavan Govindan, an IIM-A alumnus, founding partner of management consulting firm NxtPractice Growth Partners, and an independent director on the board of Amrutanjan Healthcare, is an investor and director of Blue Circle. He says: “My investment in Blue Circle fully validates my conviction that it addresses a real networking problem which most leaders like me face – being bombarded with irrelevant connections, and getting spammed with an overload of platitudinal content. Blue Circle’s problem-solving construct crafts a solution, strategically, elegantly, and relentlessly.”

 
The company has raised seed funding round and it is planning to raise Pre-series A round in the next few months.
 
Business and revenue model
 
The mobile app is simple to use and is divided by sectors, so the discussions are B2B-led. The platform also curates its own discussion sessions with members of particular sectors. There also are webinars and offline conferences.
 
The app has seen users spending almost 12 minutes, compared with LinkedIn’s about 17 minutes. “We are growing month on month, too,” says Anand.
 
At present 95 per cent of the subscriber base, content creation and conversations are India-focused, about five per cent of users come from the US, UK and UAE.

 
Anand is confident that the app will have 100,000 leaders with Blue Circle membership over the next year. On revenue generation, he says the company has several avenues like sponsorships with companies, webinar, conferences, membership fee, etc. He adds that for the offline version which Blue Circle had started with, entry fees went from as high as Rs 1.5 lakh per year to as low as Rs 10,000. However, the company is yet to start charging membersfor the app. “In future we will look at several models like premium and freemium. At present our focus is on adding members and giving them a platform that caters to their requirements. We also planning to come up with a marketplace mechanism, too,” he adds.